Most people on the lake don’t really know where Warren Brook really comes from. They know it comes from behind Warren Sands and some people have been up the swampy area behind the beach. (At times of the year, the brook breaks through the beach and you can paddle up in a kayak.) But most people just see the swamp. The Wentworth Watershed’s Warren Brook Easement, however, protects the water coming into that swampy area, and therefore the lake, and is quite beautiful.
It is not easy to get there and a few things make it, actually, unpleasant. First, there is poison ivy as well as bittersweet vine and brambles if you enter from RT. 109. The woods then are not very friendly and there are a few ticks around, well lots of them. But there are rewards if you go there but it is not an easy walk. Actually, getting there is really “not recommended”. At the same time, the property protects the watershed so it if very valuable to the Lake Wentworth Watershed.
The picture, above, shows lots of the property. At the center left, part of the Warren Brook Swamp area shows up. Closer is a rather large, active beaver dam. Up and to the right is an inactive beaver dam. In the middle right, what looks to be a grassy area is actually a swamp as it doglegs left. The houses in the distance, the white line, are on Rt. 109. All of this land in the picture is protected through the Wentworth Watershed easement or through Moose Mountain Regional Greenways easement. Mt. Washington is the highest point in the background.
Near Rt. 109, there are a series of beaver dams. Some are more active than others. One dam provides a large pond and, in May, is a haven for birds.
Beaver dams are transient things where the beavers move in, eat all the things that they like to eat, and then move on. At a lower level is another area that was a beaver dam but the food was gone and the abandoned it for new digs.
One of the more common warblers is the Yellow Rumped Warbler. There were half a dozen around the beaver dam in late May and they are “good looking” birds.
In the swampy areas along the streams, there are marsh marigolds. They are a sign of spring and grow in pristine waters.
If you think about Warren Brook from the “lake point of view” you don’t think of it as a brook because you never see it. At the same time, this picture shows the brook where it is transitioning from one beaver dam area to another.
There are other ways to get to the property including from the top of Pleasant Valley Road, but it is not easy from there, either. This is a property that is great for the watershed but is not easy to walk on and enjoy.
I love these photos. I usually see it only from my kayak. Once I went to where the stream is near 109 to collect a water sample with my father, Dick Goldthwait to send to UNH, but we got covered in ticks.
Love those Marsh Marigolds and the Yellow Rumped Warbler. Thanks to whoever took those pictures in May and braved the unfriendly parts of the woods to give us pictures of the Warren Brook area.